Padmashree Gehl Sampath’s work sits at the intersection of innovation, market access, geopolitics and industrial transformation. She brings deep expertise in designing initiatives for businesses and governments that translate innovations into commercially viable and scalable global solutions. She has a vast experience in senior leadership positions, in both the global private and public sectors, working to bring together capital, market and execution strategies in complex policy environments. She has worked in over fifty emerging markets in different regions, helping companies and governments to negotiate influence and create value through innovation in the biopharmaceutical industry.
She is also a seasoned public policy leader, equity and access advocate, a distinguished voice in debates on technology and industrial change, and an author. Her work draws on a unique combination of private sector execution, research and high-level policy engagement with businesses, governments, international and regional institutions and rulemaking bodies.
Padmashree works with a range of stakeholders (from CEOs to senior management of established global companies), industries (from biopharmaceuticals and healthcare to high-tech), and multilateral and other organizations (from World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, to Africa CDC, African Development Bank) to national agencies.
In addition to being Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center, she is also a Visiting Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics, and a Member of the Trade and Industrialization Council of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat. She is the Founding Chief Executive Officer of the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation. During COVID-19, she held several senior leadership positions including serving as the Senior Advisor to the President of the African Development Bank on Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare, as Chairperson of the Technical Advisory Group of the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (CTAP) of the World Health Organisation, and Senior Strategic Advisor to Africa Centers of Disease Control (Africa CDC). She has also been a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center, Harvard University between 2018-2023, and held professorial appointments at the United Nations University-MERIT (Professorial Fellow), University of Rwanda (Honorary Professor), University of Aalborg Denmark (Adjunct Professor) and University of Johannesburg, South Africa (Visiting Professor).
Her forthcoming book “Transforming Biopharmaceutical Innovation: A New Model of Corporate Governance (with Oner Tulum and William Lazonick), published by the Cambridge University Press Elements Series, is expected to be available in early 2027. She is the author of five other books: “Sustainable Industrial Development in Africa: Towards a New Development Agenda”, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 (Co edited with Banji Oyeyinka), Reconfiguring Global Health Innovation: Routledge Publishing, 2010, Latecomer Development: States, Knowledge and Economic Growth, Routledge Publishing, 2009 (With Banji Oyeyinka), The Gene Revolution and Global Food Security: Biotechnology Innovation in Latecomers, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (With Banji Oyeyinka), Regulating Bioprospecting: Institutions for Drug Research, Access and Benefit Sharing, United Nations University Press, Tokyo, 2005. Her work has previously appeared in the Harvard International Review, Harvard Review of Public Health and the Michigan Journal of International Law, among others. 
Recent Publications